Throughout the day Monday, Aug. 28, Bradford T. Laney's wife repeatedly insisted their Kingwood home in Fosters Mill was going to flood. Laney wasn't worried.

"You couldn't even see water on our street," Laney said. "Water was draining beautifully, perfectly, (there were) like a few puddles."

He looked outside at their young daughter playing happily in shallow puddles, and he was convinced flooding was in no way a threat to them. In retrospect, he said, his wife was completely right.

It started around 6 or 7 p.m.

"In the next eight hours, the water rose from the end of our driveway, to the middle of our yard, to our front door," Laney said.

Laney continued, insisting the water would not make it into the house, until around midnight, when they realized they could no longer see their mailbox under the floodwater.

In the middle of the night while their daughter slept, Laney and his wife started moving furniture upstairs, and in the morning, they piled into their neighbor's boat and left.

"Our house has different levels, so the rooms that did the best got about 12 inches of water, but our den is a couple steps down," Laney said. "It got three feet of water and just kept all the water for four days until we could get back in and finally pump it out."

He said the house now looks like a skeleton. Six feet of drywall had to be ripped out in every room.

"We won't even let our daughter go back there," Laney said. "We don't want her to remember our house in that manner."

Their house, like so many other people in areas not prone to flooding, did not have flood insurance.

They applied for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a Small Business Administration loan and plan to use whatever money they receive to put toward rebuilding their home.

Laney estimates the house's interior will cost approximately $60,000, and the exterior will cost $15,000 to $20,000. Until they can at least get the inside of their home done, the family is staying with Laney's in-laws, who also live in Kingwood.

Soon after his home flooded, Laney became convinced the flood waters reaching his home were the result of the water release at the Lake Conroe dam.

"To me, the visual aspect of what I saw is the water was draining fine when it was raining and then, only after the gates were open, did floodwaters come … It was that mass collection and concentrated release that really doomed our homes," Laney said.

He spoke about the issue with neighbors and other community members whose homes flooded as well.

"Everyone would say kind of jokingly, 'We need to get those guys; they should be sued,' but the whole time I was like, 'No really ― they need to be sued,'" Laney said.

Laney is a lawyer with Raley & Bowick LLP.

On Monday, Oct. 7, Laney filed a mass tort lawsuit against the San Jacinto River Authority and the Texas Water Development Board. He also started a website at www.kingwoodflood.com.

Laney said they did not want to do a class action lawsuit because it relies on majority vote to decide whether to settle or continue the suit for all plaintiffs involves. Instead, they decided to do a mass tort, which gives each plaintiff more individual say in how they personally wish to proceed with the case, instead of relying on majority vote.

He and the 58 other residents who have joined the suit so far are seeking financial compensation for damages from flooding, as well as an immediate and long-term injunction to ensure a flooding event will not result from the concentrated release of water in the future.

In addition to asserting there was a physical taking of property by water from the intentional release of the Lake Conroe dam, the case also states there was a regulatory taking from interference by a governmental agency preventing residents from using and enjoying their property.

"By building the dam there and putting the protocols in place ― 'We can collect six feet of water; we can release as fast as we want after we make that collection' ― by putting in those regulations, they've committed impermissible takings through these regulations, and the Texas Water Development Board was one of the entities that built the dam and that helped install the regulations on how it's run."

Representatives with the Texas Water Development Board said they cannot comment on pending litigation.

Ronda Trow, the San Jacinto River Authority public relations manager, said they are anticipating multiple lawsuits to be filed. She encouraged people to visit the SJRA website at www.sjra.net to view news releases and links to information regarding these issues.

City of Houston District E Councilman Dave Martin has been vocal about his belief that the river authority holds culpability for the extent of flood damage experienced in the Kingwood area.

In an emailed response to a request for his thoughts on legal actions by citizens, Martin stated, "Every citizen has the right to file suit if they feel they've been intentionally wronged. My role is to look for answers to questions which will allow Kingwood residents to move forward and ensure this never happens again. I think there needs to be an independent investigation into protocols and procedures at the Lake Conroe dam. I also believe that SJRA Board positions should be occupied by engineers and Kingwood residents who could provide some insight into this process, which is clearly lacking."

The river authority released a document called "Responses to Statements Made by Kingwood Officials," refuting comments about the release of water from Lake Conroe made during a news briefing in Kingwood.

The response argued Lake Conroe's reduction of the peak flow through Lake Conroe into the San Jacinto River caused a decrease of about 50,000 cfs in the peak flows heading to Lake Houston. Additionally, they stated, the flow from Lake Conroe that makes it to Lake Houston accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of the total flows into Lake Houston.

"The vast majority of the flows are from other watersheds that don't have gated structures to reduce the peak flows," it stated.

The river authority responded to a comment that the Coastal Water Authority's pre-release of Lake Houston water prevented some flooding in the area, and if the SJRA would have done a pre-release, much of the damage to the Kingwood area would not have happened. The SJRA stated the elevation of the flooding was not nor would have been perceivably impacted by pre-releasing water.

In response to the accusation that opening the Lake Conroe floodgates released a rush of water causing damage to Kingwood homes and causing Lake Houston's water level to increase four feet in five hours, the SJRA stated "There is no question that the flows from this event were unprecedented and were highly damaging. Yes, homes were destroyed by the powerful force of the high flows in the river. However, Lake Conroe actually reduces the flows in the river and only 20% of the water flowing into Lake Houston originated from the Lake Conroe watershed … The water in Lake Houston rose steadily at a rate of approximately seven inches every four hours as officially recorded by U.S. Geological Survey gauges during the peak of the storm, not four feet."

He read a quote from the document that stated the "SJRA and county emergency officials meet regularly to prepare for storm events and discuss ways to improve their collective performance in accomplishing their respective responsibilities."

However, in a previous meeting, Martin spoke with a Harris County Homeland Security Emergency Management representative who denied ever having met an SJRA representative to discuss preparations for storm events.

Additionally, Martin said the SJRA released two-and-a-half times more water than the Lake Conroe dam had ever done in the past.

"And they did this without data modeling," Martin said. "They did this without simulations studies … their release was done without any modeling to support their decision to flood Kingwood."

Martin called on the Natural Resource Committee to implement an immediate change in the SJRA protocols of operations for Lake Conroe.

"Until we can study what happened and figure out what happened and why it happened, we need to begin this process immediately ― immediately taking down the daily holding level of Lake Conroe from 201 feet above sea level to between 195 and 197 feet above sea level," Martin said.

He also called for an immediate investigation into the SJRA and Lake Conroe dam to study things like the possibility of dredging the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston; the extent of communication between the SJRA and Coastal Water Authority; the viability of pre-releasing water prior to storm events; and an examination of the "roles and responsibilities of the chief executive officer, the chief legal counsel of the SJRA, and board members who currently make up the SJRA."

The Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce has also joined the push for an investigation into why the severe flooding occurred and how to prevent it in the future. Chamber President Jenna Armstrong took the issue to the federal level, requesting aid for the Lake Houston area from federal elected officials in Washington, D.C.

In the Lake Houston area, more than 250 businesses and 6,000 homes flooded "because of the release of water from Lake Conroe by the San Jacinto River Authority," stated a news release issued Oct. 6.

Among the things Armstrong is asking for federal help with are "federally mandated accountability for disaster prevention (HR 3824), (and) funding for a study of Lake Conroe, San Jacinto River and Lake Houston."

Laney said injunction is one of the most important aspects of the lawsuit he filed against the TWDB and SJRA. He is worried that if a flood like this occurs in the community again, Kingwood may never recover.

"No one would ever buy houses in Kingwood. No one would ever want to move out to Kingwood, and you would just see it kind of slowly decay from the beautiful, built-up, sought-after suburb it is today," Laney said.